A wide variety of executable malicious files or software (malware) exist that can attack and potentially harm modern computers. Malware may include, for example, computer viruses, worms, Trojan horse programs, spyware, adware, crimeware, etc. Modern malware is often designed to provide financial gain to the attacker and surreptitiously capture important information such as logins, passwords, bank account identifiers, and credit card numbers. Similarly, the malware can provide hidden interfaces that allow the attacker to access and control the compromised computer.
Systems and/or software for countering malware typically operate by seeking to classify a particular executable file as either malware or as a safe file before the file is executed, downloaded, saved, etc. In certain such classifications, aspects of the executable file may be compared to a dataset of other files to determine whether the file is a safe file or is malware. Due to the large number of different types of malware that exists, such datasets are extremely large and the comparison may be computationally expensive.